


Intended Study

by writerdragonfly



Series: Thermodynamic Heart Verse [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Rodney's Citrus Allergy, Thermodynamic Heart Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 00:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything about his father's work hadn't died with him. But maybe, Rodney thinks later, it should have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intended Study

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had most of this written before Teyla interrupted. But I like her interruption waaaaay better. 
> 
> I am not, by the way, remotely a scientist. So how allergies work is totally hand-waved over here. Also, totally like that Rodney's citrus allergy is an actual tag.

When their father had passed on, most of his work had died with him. The work he’d been doing his entire life consolidated into almost a single point alongside him and burned as surely as he had upon cremation.

But everything hadn't died with him.

Rodney doesn't expect to find what little remained. He doesn't want to. But it happens and he does and afterward he can't _unsee it_.

It's his baby book. Innocuous on the outside but dark on the inside. None of the intended gender titles are used. There's no stories about his birthdays or his first teeth.

[as expected, surviving infant shows signs of the anticipated allergies...]

[as of twenty months, gene therapy has established...]

Instead, there’s a series of notes that tell him about every allergy being effective as intended, that every quirk of his biology was an experiment, as if he was Clark Kent and his father just wanted him to have his own kryptonite.

[... allergy to all forms of citrus resulted in a hospital... was unable to resuscitate child without help...]

Rodney’s lifelong fear of his own mortality because of his allergies had been an intended study, something his father wanted to do on purpose.

Somehow, Rodney’s life is a comic book and his father had always been the villain of the story.

-x-

Rodney burns the book. He burns the book to ashes and leaves them where they sit, a gentle smolder on the ground of his childhood bedroom.

He burns it, but he does not forget it. Cannot forget it.

-x-

Later, much later, years later, as he sits beside his partner in Atlantis, a plate in front of him, he remembers.

And he says, in halting sentences and drawn out silences, “My... father... After he died...”

The whole thing comes out to John in the middle of a packed mess hall and John’s not the only one listening.

“Your father was a piece of work, McKay,” someone says, and Rodney has to turn to put a name to the voice, “I would be proud to call you _son_.”

Rodney has to swallow back an unexpectedly watery response, “Thank you, sir.”

John waits until Colonel Sumner leaves the spot by their table before he responds.

“I would never call you son,” his partner says with a wide smirk, “but if you want--”

Rodney throws a bright green roll across the table at his face.

  



End file.
